Wicked Uncle

Chapter XXX

Before ten o’clock the party had separated for the night. An evening of profound discomfort was now something to look back upon with feelings of interest, doubt, suspicion, uncertainty, fear, or derisive amusement. Whichever of these feelings predominated in Mr. and Mrs. Tote, Mr. Carroll, Mr. and Miss Masterman, Moira Lane, Dorinda, and Justin, there is no doubt that Miss Silver had been very much interested. She had been in her room for some twenty minutes, but she had not so much as unfastened her bog-oak brooch, when a light tap sounded on her door. Opening it, she beheld Pearson, with an air of meek mystery and a finger at his lips.

Emerging, Miss Silver looked the enquiry she forbore to speak, and was beckoned farther along the passage. They passed Dorinda’s room on the right, and that occupied by Miss Masterman on the left, descended three of those unreasonable and quite dangerous steps so frequent in old houses, turned the corner, and came into an irregularly shaped room where an overhead light shone down upon bookshelves, a large globe on a mahogany stand, a battered upright piano, and what had obviously been a schoolroom table. Hovering midway between the butler and the fellow detective, Pearson hoped that Miss Silver didn’t mind his disturbing her-“but I thought you ought to know.”

“Certainly, Mr. Pearson. What is it?”

“You don’t find it cold here?”

Since she had not removed that old and well-tried friend her black velvet coatee, Miss Silver was able to reply,

“Not in the least. Pray tell me what has happened.”

It must be admitted that Pearson had been feeling a little out of it. Not that he wanted to be involved in a murder case-very far from it. But to be, as it were, unavoidably in the midst of one, and yet not to know what was going on was bound to put a strain on him. He had rather leapt at the first opportunity of relieving this strain. He was now hoping that his leap was not going to be considered precipitate. Like so many well-meaning people, he was given to doubts when they could no longer serve any useful purpose. Miss Silver was an unknown quantity. Her manner was gracious, but from a certain distance, and without quite knowing why, it daunted him; She saw his eyes shift like those of a nervous horse.

Quite unexpectedly she smiled. It was the smile with which in her distant governessing days it had been her wont to encourage a diffident or backward pupil. It encouraged Pearson to the point of speech.

“Seeing Mr. Carroll go into the study and shut the door, it came into my mind in what I might call rather a forcible manner that possibly it was his intention to use the telephone, and if such was the case, I thought it might be a good thing, as it were, if I was to-” He stuck, and Miss Silver helped him out.

“To listen in on the pantry extension?”

“Yes, Miss Silver. And when I heard the number-”

“You recognized it?”

“It was the Mill House number, and he asked straight away for Mrs. Oakley. Well, of course that was no go, because she never comes to the telephone, not if it was ever so. But he got Mr. Oakley, and directly he started in I could see he was going to be nasty. It’s my opinion he’d had a good bit more to drink than he could carry, as I dare say you may have noticed yourself when he came into the drawing-room. Not to say drunk, he wasn’t, but pretty far on with feeling he was cock of the walk, and not minding whether he got across anyone else or not.”

Miss Silver coughed appreciatively.

“A very graphic description, Mr. Pearson.”

“Well, I thought you must have noticed him, same as I did, the first minute he started talking to Mr. Oakley. ‘That you, Oakley?’ he said-very offhand, if you take my meaning. ‘Not dragged you from your slumbers, I hope. Or perhaps you’re not sleeping so much these nights. I shouldn’t if I was you. But that’s the advantage of single blessedness, one hasn’t got these complications to cope with.’ Mr. Oakley said very stiff, ‘I don’t know what you are talking about, but if you have anything to say, perhaps you’ll say it.’ ”

Pearson broke off and looked in a deprecating manner at Miss Silver. “I don’t know whether you happened to notice, but Mr. Carroll has got a way of laughing. Not at all what I should call the thing-more like what you might call a snigger, if you know what I mean.”

Miss Silver knew exactly what he meant. She gathered that Carroll had sniggered at Mr. Oakley, and that Mr. Oakley’s reactions had been exactly what might have been expected, whereupon Mr. Carroll had not only repeated the offence, but had said in what Pearson could only describe as a nasty voice, “Oh, well, I thought you might be interested. The looker-on sees most of the game, you know. That’s what I’ve been telling the others. Of course I may have bored them, but I don’t somehow think that I did. No-I’m almost sure I didn’t. What a pity you and your wife weren’t there. You’d have been deeply interested, because, you see, I really did have a very good view of the hall when the lights came on, and a particularly good view of your wife. But of course, ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense.’ ”

Pearson’s pronunciation of the famous Garter motto was patriotic in the extreme. It is safe to say that the country of its origin would have made very little of it. Miss Silver, herself addicted to a British pronunciation of the French tongue, understood him perfectly.

“Pray continue, Mr. Pearson.”

“Well, there wasn’t much more. Mr. Oakley said, ‘Hold your tongue!’ and Mr. Carroll said, ‘Well, I’ve held it up to now, but that’s not to say I shall go on holding it!’ and he slammed down the receiver.”

“Dear me!” said Miss Silver.

Pearson looked complacent.

“That’s what I thought, madam. And it seemed to me that it would be a good thing to tell you-the Chief Inspector and Sergeant Abbott not being available, and not wishing to have it said that I kept anything back that might be useful to the police.”

“You did perfectly right,” said Miss Silver briskly. “How long ago did this conversation take place?”

“A matter of maybe five minutes or so. I had the locking-up to see to. By the time I got round to the front door Mr. Carroll was coming out of the study and going up to his room.”

He was thanked and dismissed.

About five minutes later Sergeant Abbott was told that he was wanted on the telephone, an instrument very inconveniently situated in the narrow entrance-hall of the Ram, to which hostelry he had accompanied his Chief with misgivings already abundantly justified. The Ram had four bedrooms, and all the beds were lumpy and smelt of beer, the food exemplified every sin of omission and commission which a cook can perpetrate, the beer was bad, and the telephone was in the hall. He had to disentangle the receiver from somebody else’s coat which reeked of shag.

Miss Silver’s voice came incongruously to his ear. First her slight cough, and then a prim “Hullo!” He said,

“Frank speaking.”

The primness persisted.

“I am extremely sorry to disturb you. I hope that you had not retired?”

“I’m putting it off as long as possible. I don’t know what they’ve used in the mattress. It’s not sharp enough for road-metal-I rather suspect mangelwurzels. I am covered with bucolic bruises.”

Miss Silver’s cough was hortatory.

“I am exceedingly uneasy.”

She had slipped into her British French.

“What’s up?”

“That very foolish young man Mr. Carroll is giving everyone to understand that he is in possession of some knowledge- evidence-I do not know what to call it. He pretends-” the word in French bears a more respectable meaning than in English-“he pretends to have seen something of an incriminating nature at the moment when the lights came on. I do not know if it is possible. He was certainly in occupation of a vantage-point- he may have seen something, or he may not. What troubles me is the possible consequence of this foolish boasting. It does not really signify whether there is any truth behind it. What does signify is that the murderer may believe that there is, and that he may act upon his belief. I am extremely uneasy.”

There was a slight pause. After which Frank said,

“What do you want me to do?”

“It would relieve my mind very much to have you in the house. I feel sure that Miss Brown would offer no objection.”

Sergeant Abbott said gravely,

“You know, this is bribery and corruption-Vi-springs instead of mangolds, and everything else to match. Well, I can put it up to the Chief-I don’t suppose he’ll mind. Will you hold on?”

Miss Silver held the line and meditated upon human nature- more particularly upon Mr. Carroll’s nature. She found it a far from pleasant subject. Considering the motives which might have prompted him in his folly, she dealt with such qualities as a sense of inferiority to be compensated by aggression, jealousy of others more fortunately placed-in which connection she recalled her favourite Lord Tennyson’s dictum, “Envy is the fume of little minds”-and, lastly and with great seriousness, the possibility that this cloud of words was in effect a smokescreen to cover his own guilt and blacken others with suspicion.

She was still occupied with these thoughts when Frank Abbott came back upon the line.

“All right-he hasn’t any objection. Just murmured a few sweet nothings about mountains out of mole-hills, and suggested that I was after the fleshpots. Well, it won’t take me more than five or six minutes. I’ll be right along.”